Perspective

As I passed by some of our older equipment here in the library a little while ago, I was reminded of yesterday’s Mellon class. (If you remember, I teach a 10 week class centered around librarianship and library recruitment.) We were discussing an article they were required to read as homework, and the article was written in 1994, when the Internet was just starting to become a cultural phenomenon. The article made some interesting predictions as to what the future would possibly hold in librarianship, and I was struck by a paragraph pointing out that, once libraries became fully wired, there would be a desperate need to figure out what to keep and store, and what to completely discard as useless. When I pointed this out, I used our own library’s microfiche and microform readers as an example.

Then I got blank stares. One of the students piped up and asked me what microfiche was. I felt very old, just then! Still, I know an educational opportunity when I see one. We happened to have some old microfiche that was never discarded lying around in one of the drawers that a co-worker handed to me to pass around as an example. Man, you should have seen their faces! They couldn’t believe anything like that was ever used.

Anyway, I bring this up in order to make a point. For those of you out there who are teachers, professors, librarians, or hell, even parents, stop and think about just how rapidly our technology changes over the years. I graduated from college about 10 years ago, and we were still using print indexes at the time. I remember the college switching from card catalogs to computer catalogs while I was there. Some of my students don’t even know what a card catalog looks like. It may not seem that long ago for you, but it may as well have been the Stone Age for them.

Now, pardon me while I go shine my walker and drink some prune juice. I better not catch you kids on my lawn! :b